Carrying On. Sorta?

@mtaratoot

I love it. Interesting story, and I totally agree about that awful "too full" feeling. I guess humans are fickle beasts (I know I am) and full of contradictions. I don't like to feel overly full, and yet I want to keep eating. I've wondered if I'm a person who struggles with endings (yes, yes, I am.) I don't mind change, but I hate endings. Are they the same thing? (Cue Twilight Zone music)

This leads me to another question: is successful weight management -- and by that, I mean easily staying within a calorie goal, looking & feeling good, not obsessing -- predicated on getting comfortable with feeling hungry?

I don't mind feeling hungry. (Not famished, of course.) But I'm not sure I want to feel hungry for the rest of my days.

vivmom2014 wrote: »

@mtaratoot

I love it. Interesting story, and I totally agree about that awful "too full" feeling. I guess humans are fickle beasts (I know I am) and full of contradictions. I don't like to feel overly full, and yet I want to keep eating. I've wondered if I'm a person who struggles with endings (yes, yes, I am.) I don't mind change, but I hate endings. Are they the same thing? (Cue Twilight Zone music)

This leads me to another question: is successful weight management -- and by that, I mean easily staying within a calorie goal, looking & feeling good, not obsessing -- predicated on getting comfortable with feeling hungry?

I don't mind feeling hungry. (Not famished, of course.) But I'm not sure I want to feel hungry for the rest of my days.

Imma go with mtaratoot's assumption that Spring will be OK with a digression on this sub-thread. Fingers crossed!

To the bolded:

From reading here, there do seem to be a few people who find that they need to be comfortable with feeling hungry, longer term. But I don't think that's the most common scenario among the long-term maintainers (among whom I count myself now, at 7 years at a healthy weight after decades of overweight/obesity), based on what I've read here.

For me, so far, it does take long term attention, maybe even vigilance. But it doesn't feel obsessive, or like a sufferfest. (I think my situation may be mildly complicated by being a hedonist by nature: I want to eat all the things because I like yummy. That's unlikely to change. I'm not saying everyone needs to go this route, but I expect to be calorie counting long term, because I want to get every last delicious calorie I've burned while staying at a healthy weight, and counting doesn't feel obsessive or slavish to me. Those feelings will vary from one person to the next.)

I do think it's pretty important to find personalized, sustainable, relatively happy eating/activity patterns that can become near-autopilot habits most of the time, as life gets complicated. How that looks specifically will vary individually, because we all have different lifestyles, preferences, strengths, and challenges.

vivmom2014 wrote: »

I see a lot of myself in @springlering62 ~ and especially this:

"Why is this so hard?"

My question encompasses comparing myself to other people, so that's bad, but I just want to know: is it either be overweight or chained to MFP for me? It isn't for other people! (Waaah, waaah!) Sure, "other people" (women I know) complain persistently about their weight, but apparently not enough to slavishly check in with a weight loss app or exercise for more calories.

And even with my slavish logging, I can SO EASILY justify eating whatever the heck I want ~ which is always too late at night, and nothing remotely low calorie or all that nourishing.

So I play this game of "over calorie limit, start again tomorrow..." and I just think: this is my life sentence?

Indeed: why is it so hard?!

Cynically, I think some of those people don't actually want to lose weight, but feel as if they ought to want to. Commiserating over that can be a form of social bonding, I think. I've been there. At the same time - and this may not apply to everyone - I need to feel that if I'm not willing to put in the work needed to achieve something (anything), then I'm not serious about wanting it. If I justify a treat - and I do (yesterday was a food-fest) - in my case I need to own that as a decision I made, trading off long term good for short-term pleasure. Sometimes that's OK, but it can't be always . . . or future Ann won't have a very good life.

There isn't any magic, in weight loss or any type of skills gain, etc. IMO, it does take some kind of work.

Sadly. Maybe.

I also think that long-term hormone balancing Takes TIME. So if I've been overweight/obese for X number of years, my body has adjusted over time to that amount of fat. Fat is hormonally active. It carries signals and creates changes in the endocrine and neurological systems.

Losing weight means the body has to balance again. That isn't completed at the moment I reach Goal Weight.

That first year or two post weight loss (80 pound loss after 20 years of being overweight) was rough. It was very hard for me to stay at that lower weight. I feel like it was biological, not psychological. I also hadn't completely changed my nutrition. Yet. I wanted my French bread, my cereal, crackers, easy comfort food I had mostly given up to lose the weight.

Yeah, that doesn't work long-term. Living on those foods causes all kinds of insulin problems. I had to go all the way back to the basics. Protein, healthy fats, fiber, 500-800g of fresh produce daily. Exercise on most days. (I shoot for a one hour walk five out of seven days.) I still log food, because I can't trust myself AND because I am like Ann - I want to eat all the food to which I am entitled, dangit. Without logging I tend to stray into way under or way over.

Technically I know the calorie amounts of most of the food I eat these days and I can do it without logging but I don't find logging to be a burden. I just do it.

vivmom2014 wrote: »

Thanks for this, @mtaratoot ~ and you've reminded me of something.

Does the stomach literally shrink with a lower-calorie way of eating? I've gotten frustrated & mad (my two specialties) and decided I'm EATING EVERYTHING. Then I find that I am full, actually full, and it occurs close to my calorie goal. It almost seems too good to be true!

(So just for good measure I will eat even more, just so I can be right. Omg, it is hell being me sometimes.) But: does the stomach shrink? Or is it mental, and the "full" meter clicks on more readily?

With the slightest excuse of Spring having accepted digressions, I'm going to chance replying to this.

To the bolded: Literally, no. Think about it. If signals from pressure/fullness in the stomach were the big deal, how does that relate to calories? If anything, it would relate to food volume, it seems to me. Volume and calorie content aren't tightly linked.

Anecdotally, we regularly see people here saying they can't eat all their (greatly reduced) goal calories because they've switched to foods - usually so-called "whole foods" - that they find more filling.

Like others, I think hormones are the big deal in hunger/appetite, including in all likelihood some blood sugar level triggers (for some people, anyway).

But: Bariatric surgery works in part by making the stomach smaller, and reportedly the surgery affects appetite. There are those people sated (subjectively) by lower calories when switching to a significantly different eating pattern. Some people here say that they can feel more sated if they drink water, or choose high-fluid foods like soups. That makes me think that fullness signals from the stomach aren't totally irrelevant in the practical problem of eating fewer calories.

But I think that's about appetite, more than actually hunger. On another thread, someone said they distinguish between "mouth hunger" (which I'd call appetite or cravings) and actual hunger (need for nutrients or fuel).

My appetite is triggered by low food volume, by habits (I get crave-y at times I usually eat, or in certain social situations), and that sort of thing. I can eat near endless high-calorie refined flour/sugar cookies or candy without feeling full, but not near-endless apples. If all my friends are having a deep-fried appetizer at a restaurant, I crave one, too.

Even appetite, I think, has hormonal triggers. There's a fun study that compared the effects of a "healthy shake" vs. an "indulgent shake" on a group of volunteers. In reality, they were exactly the same shakes, in both groups. Not only was the "indulgent shake" perceived as less filling, but the differences were reflected in tests of the volunteers' hunger/appetite hormone levels**.

The volume and habit things can be worked through, when losing weight, I think . . . and it doesn't necessarily take a lot of time, for most of us. My habitual cravings seem to fade within a couple of weeks, if I don't indulge them. (From reading posts here, I don't assume it's universally that quick/easy.)

I don't think actual hunger occurs very often, among us lucky folks in the developed world who have access to food, and money to buy it. That it's not actual hunger doesn't mean a lot for our weight management efforts, because it's appetite we're struggling with. I do think that habitual dimension of this means that we can perceive that our stomach shrinks after a period of time eating at a calorie-appropriate levels . . . and it probably doesn't matter whether that's literally the case or not.

** https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21574706/

I learned about that study in a radio show/podcast called Hidden Brain. This small study is discussed in an episode about surprising effects of mindset (not just for weight management), along with a number of other studies that have involved mindset and its literal physiological (bodily) effects. Worth a bit of a think, maybe. Here's the episode:

https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/reframing-your-reality-part-2/

It's a little long (52 minutes), but IMO very interesting and applicable to our weight management plans. It's not a super-technical science show: It's intended to make information accessible to non-science folks. There was also a part 1, more about mindset and stress response, i.e., more the psychology of mindset in part 1, vs. the impact on the body in part 2.

springlering62 wrote: »

(snip context)

Ann has often mentioned being a “good little old calorie burner”. I wonder if after you’ve been at this a while if it’s almost like your body rewards you and relaxes fat storage, or perhaps metabolism ramps up.

Or maybe it’s also attributable to the so-much-better-now nutrition.

FWIW, I needed 25-30% more calories than MFP predicted right from the start of loss. That's pretty much how I accidentally lost too fast at first, got weak and fatigued, before I realized.

Some of that higher calorie need is possibly differences in starting muscle mass. I'm not any kind of Amazon-esque bodybuilder type (I wish, but I'm too lazy). But I do believe I have more muscle mass than the average woman of my age, and did have at the start of loss as well. (Without explaining the speculative arithmetic involved, I back-estimated what the statistically average 60-whatever woman's BF% would be at my BMI, and it's materially higher than mine, even if my estimate of mine is self-congratulatory.)

But: At this point, your muscle mass is much higher than typical for your demographic, too. That's not a guarantee of substantially higher calorie needs, because the differential for muscle vs. fat at rest is so small, but it can be a factor. Also, you're way, way fitter than average for your demographic, which IMO is likely to translate into automagically higher NEAT for most people.

On the nutrition side of things, there is some very limited, non-definitive research I've seen (small study) that suggested less-processed foods may have a substantially higher TEF than processed foods. While I obviously ate in stupid ways to get fat and stay fat, for decades a big chunk of my eating has been less-processed foods. When I started cutting calories, it became an even a bigger chunk, volume-wise.

This was not an exercise in self-deprivation. It's that when I have priorities for how I spend calories, that's the food that wins, for me: Taste-preference-wise, not just nutrition, satiation, or (heaven forbid) orthorexy.

Let me be utterly clear, @springlering62, I absolutely don't think that there's anything wrong with the way you eat. But the way you eat, as you describe it here, would make me completely miserable. (I do suspect I'd be hungry, but I'm not going to run that experiment ThankYouVeryMuch. Life is too short to eat food that makes me miserable.)

I suspect your overall average nutrition is fine, and IMO that's important. If nutrition's very sub-par in some way, that can sometimes trigger appetite/cravings, but I'm guessing you're in OK shape nutritionally. I don't know how much perfectionism/orthorexy would add to calorie burn or satiation on top of reasonable overall nutrition, but I'm skeptical (on near zero evidence) that it'd be a big deal. Eating in ways that make you happy is a big deal, IMO.

It's common advice around here that eating predominantly less-processed foods results in more satiety. I'm not fully convinced . . . but again, not willing to run the experiment on myself because it would make me miserable to eat predominantly highly-processed foods. (I do know that you eat a fair amount of less-processed foods in addition to more highly-processed ones. I'm just chatting here about satiety folklore on MFP, not accusing you of anything, still less telling you ought to do any particular thing. I don't hint. If it were criticism/advice, that'd be clear.)

I eat about 1/2 to 2/3 my exercise calories back, and I earn a lot of exercise calories.

I’ve averaged 2600-3000 a week for months now. Most days are around 2300, and then I’ll have basically a binge for a night or two. A family sized chocolate bar, a package of pizelle cookies,…..or both. 😬


Even when I do, and check the damage next morning, I’m still reliably in my average weekly range. It’s almost like my body says,”Ok. Mathematically, that’s enough now, honey.”

So you're eating less than maintenance most of the time, and more sometimes . . . really a lot more, sometimes.

Which is exactly what I do. But I think of it as calorie banking for periodic indulgences, not as eating X calories then binging. I'm not telling you to think that way, either . . . and I'm sure some would see me as rationalizing bad behavior. I don't care. It's how I like to arrange my life. My life.

I'm sure you know all the theory why an occasional big eating day can count less than expected. That "benefit" is limited, but it's potentially in the picture.

ETA afterthought: The bolded would be "intuitive eating" under a maybe-pejorative alias, wouldn't it?

Not dehydrated. I’m drinking insane amounts of ice water. As doofus as it sounds, I’m wondering if all the ice I’m noshing on is contributing by lowering my core temperature, and the effort to reheat it. Or by same token, hot classes have been excessively hot and humid lately (obviously), and have been much more difficult as a result.

Maintenance is hard, harder than the actual weight loss, requiring much self control and daily diligence, but has also been very very good to me. Things continue to change- body, muscle distribution, endurance, strength (in little bitty increments 😂) And I shouldn’t be here bellyaching about being hungry with such generous calories. (Although I do earn them, lest anyone think I’m supernaturally blessed.)

I also do wonder whether your goal is high enough, though it's hard for me to tell based on limited information I pick up from casually reading your excellent threads/comments here. It seems like you repeatedly slip into losing too much weight, from that casual impression. IF that's so, you're training your body to expect famine, which is potentially going to increase adaptive thermogenesis, seems like.

Folklore (and I think some research) also suggests that as a person gets leaner, under-eating is more likely to have appetite/cravings impact. You've gotten pretty lean at times, I think?

Most days I eat around what you do, or a little less, usually 2200-ish (gross, not net), and - though I haven't estimated it precisely - I think the daily calorie bank is only around 150 calories or so (varies by season). My routine net goal is 1850. I only get 6,000-8,000 exercise calories per month (occasional spike to 10,000), so less than you, but I eat them all. (Of course, exercise calorie estimating is fraught.)

I don't log/count the indulgent meals/days every time any more - often they involve foods that are in wild-guess territory for estimating, and generally (so far) I can keep weight in a reasonable range now without the effort of counting those. (I logged everything like it was religion during loss and the early phase of maintenance.)

springlering62 wrote: »

My new(ish) trainer asked me this morning if I’m losing weight again. I’ve been hanging out at 144, give or take a couple, for months now. I had suddenly noticed my clothes getting looser in the waistline, while biceps and thighs are starting to fit tighter, but I thought it was me.

I’m freaking hungry all the time lately, for the first time since counting calories. I even wake up hungry.

This comes while I’m also making a deliberate effort to cut back activity.

This so all so damn confusing. Maintenance is confusing.

I’m still “motivated” (dear lord I hate that word after years of being here!!!) not to get fat again, but sometimes it just feels like a full time job.

/rant

More folklore: Some people find that some exercise types help to moderate appetite. Could that be true for you?

Also note: If clothes are looser in waist, tighter over quads/hams and biceps . . . well, muscle mass, leanness - calorie needs and appetite factors I mentioned a few paragraphs above. Getting leaner at the same weight (recomp) is "weight loss", in a appetite/hunger hormone sense, I think. Maybe your trainer's onto something.

I'm sorry that you're feeling hungry, plus stressed about maintenance. I hope you'll understand the above as just chatting and speculating, not as some kind of directive. I think you've done a great job with both loss and maintenance, contributed so much good content to the Community, wish that your current course could somehow be easier and more confident for you. But I've got nothin'.

springlering62 wrote: »

My new(ish) trainer asked me this morning if I’m losing weight again. I’ve been hanging out at 144, give or take a couple, for months now. I had suddenly noticed my clothes getting looser in the waistline, while biceps and thighs are starting to fit tighter, but I thought it was me.

I’m freaking hungry all the time lately, for the first time since counting calories. I even wake up hungry.

This comes while I’m also making a deliberate effort to cut back activity.

This so all so damn confusing. Maintenance is confusing.

I’m still “motivated” (dear lord I hate that word after years of being here!!!) not to get fat again, but sometimes it just feels like a full time job.

/rant

@springlering62. I vote for recomp. I don't have any experience with it but if you're waist is smaller and you're arms and legs a bit bigger with no change in weight it would seem you are losing some fat while gaining muscle. Also, if you are hungry maybe you do need to eat back your exercise calories. Your body is trying to tell you something and maybe is it is saying eat more for those muscles.